The United States of Emergency :: September 11 Terrorism Essays

The United States of extremity   We are living in an ongoing crisis, a long-term advance of emergency. We are at war all over the world (U.S. organization officials tell us that Al-Qaeda operates in or from 60 countries). We take hold partial martial law within our country, most obviously in airports. Escalation has taken over. Killing has escalated. Fear has escalated.   This gives diversity ken a forward-looking resonance, a new bottom line. It gives tribe a renewed purpose. regeneration is the key to survival. So the logic is clear diversity must be escalated.   They dont think like we do, said a U.S. terrorism expert. I could neer imagine myself diving a plane into a building and kill pot. The response of some community shows their cognitive/imaginative threshold. Some people were conceptually blocked. I cant imagine how they could do that, said many people after Sept. 11.   When we define some people as deviant, we cant approach them in our usua l way, it puts them beyond our reach, or else we would have to admit that their deviance is within our repertoire as well. The more(prenominal) different from our norm someone is, the more we are challenged to bridge the distance. When we live with great overlap and similarity, we dont practice make contact with the farther reaches of human nature (the title of a word of honor by Abraham Maslow), our own or someone elses.   We talked about outsiders and outcasts in contact with the School shootings of the past few years. When I was teaching Lord of the locomote to a high school English class, students were quick to dismiss a character as nuts. They accepted only a narrow pot of normal. We write off, avoid, demonize, pathologize, those who seem different. We homogenize our mental/emotional/political environment. We pay back our norms and convince ourselves we are the most normal AND the most special people in existence.   Feminists are terrorists to a male-dominant w orld order. Someone who is considered deviant is by definition not accessible in the usual mode and is seen as a threat to ones stability and security. A physician has to enter the consciousness and subjectivity of the patient or hes not a good physician, says Dr. Oliver Sacks. Dr. Jerrold Post, George working capital University psychiatrist, has been giving interviews in which he says the terrorists are not psychotic.